A Boy Named Sue

www.paulcoia.com

My middle name is Giacomo, which is Italian for James and is, I believe, a fine name if you want to write opera or dabble as a dictator, but I rarely dust it off and use it. Plain old Paul Coia seems to do the job just fine and leaving out my middle name makes things shorter, a mix of the common and the Latin, while not taking up too much of anyone’s time.

But when I was very young, for reasons I now forget, I thought my name was perhaps a bit too common and would typecast me, taking me in to the hairdressing profession, which was not what I wanted at all. Maybe in Glasgow all hairdressers had Italian surnames and that influenced me, or perhaps all our local barbers were called Paul, the way all Jimmy’s tend to be cab drivers, all Chloes work on perfume counters, and people with no vowels in their name end up working in Starbucks.

Whatever the reason, I believed back then that my name was going to be a handicap if my conversation was to progress beyond the “something for the weekend sir?” that I used to overhear when getting my short back and sides. I hadn’t a clue what those freshly shaved customers actually got in their brown paper bags and assumed it might be tickets for a football match one week, a hymn sheet for Sunday Mass the next.

I knew that if I went in to hairdressing I wouldn’t cope with constantly coming up with new surprises for customers every weekend in their Lucky Bags so my young brain used to run through loads of new names I could adopt to save me from sweeping hairy floors, eventually settling on one that I felt was rugged and would lead me to fame and fortune rather than rinse and blow dry. It had to trip off the tongue and sound pleasant, while being strong and virile, so I took Clint from Mr Eastwood and Carson from an actress in Coronation Street.

At night, in bed, I used to dream of what Clint Carson was going to grow up to be and eventually he settled in to an exciting life as a land based member of International Rescue who used to save people from burning houses during the day but at night played his latest top ten hit live in clubs. In my dreams each night Clint was so good he had even managed to talk the Beatles in to reuniting to play as his backing band.

I didn’t quite get to the obsessive stage of practising Clint’s autograph but I’m sure there’s a famous Clint Carson out there somewhere, though Googling his name led me to someone in Indianapolis who works in the dairy business and another one who is a fictitious rogue in a book called Antiques Roadkill. So, not a pop star or superhero amongst them.

Names are important, as that great philosopher Johnny Cash told us in A Boy Named Sue, and when I had a long chat with the great Australian author, poet, critic and TV presenter Clive James this week, he told me that Clive is not his real name. He couldn’t wait till he was old enough to change the name his mum and dad had given him and, as soon as he could, he raced to the registrar. Good, old, solid Clive was actually born, wait for it, Vivien!

Today I was reading the newspaper and found that more and more people seem to have really ridiculous names caused by this post Eighties craze for joining father and mother’s surnames together rather than opting for one or the other. A sad article told the story of a student called James Wentworth-Stanley. Another, by Alison Smith-Squire, concerned a lady named Ella Samoles-Little and her quest for plastic surgery. I read this, incidentally, hoping to God Ella was trying to get a surgeon to amputate one of her names when, disappointed, I turned the page to find another piece about someone called Clare Milford- Haven.

This double barrelled thing is getting out of order and is becoming the fungus of the nomenclature world, growing everywhere. And where does a name like Milford- Haven come from? It sounds like a new town with helpful ring roads so the rest of us can avoid looking at its ugly roundabouts and factory outlets. Perhaps this will catch on and we may find future generations adopting the place of their birth. Maybe a John Milton- Keynes will appear, or a Penelope Market-Harborough, or perhaps even a George Shepherds-Bush.

To scruff like myself, these double barrels seem an affectation and a stab at conning us lower orders in to believing they are really from the aristocracy. Would I be able to skip to the front of queues and get in to clubs free if I brought back Giacomo and gave him a hyphen? And what happens when these people marry? If a Roberts-Smythe and an Eden- Scott get hitched and carry on this silly tradition, their son Adam will have a name that reads like a rugby team sheet - including the reserves. And it’s not as if Adam Roberts-Smythe-Eden-Scott can ever simplify things by just using his initials.

I’m finding this, new style, posh name calling is even coming to my door and affecting me now. Debbie, the Miss Right in my life, was giving me a hard time this week about road directions or something similar and wouldn’t take no for an answer, and I couldn’t help reflecting that she is now set on scrambling up the social ladder.

I think, from now on, my wife wishes to be known as Miss Always–Right.